Car Shopping Using Google Image Ads

If you follow automotive digital marketing, you’ll know that Google AdWords has rolled out functioning that allows car dealers to advertise their vehicles using a swipeable image. This happened around the end of March, but we’re still surprised at how many car dealers aren’t taking advantage of this awesome new technology.
Take out your mobile device and search for Ford Fusion or some similar model and you’ll see it – an ad direct from Ford with swipeable images of Fusions. As you go through the swipe carousel you’ll see individual ads from dealers in your area highlighting offerings. Neat, huh?
According to this article from Venture Beat, Toyota and Dealer.com are already reporting higher click through rates and actual conversion rates when buyers use these swipeable ads as opposed to regular AdWords text ads.
All this is great news, but here’s the thing: It’s not great news if your AdWords game is sloppy. If you aren’t sending people to the correct VDP or inventory page based on the model they’re looking for, if you’re not tracking your metrics and most of all, if your site for some reason still isn’t optimized for mobile, you’re on the other side of the game.
Google’s motivation for rolling out this functionality is to continually compete with the robust functioning of Facebook ads. Most of us probably know by now dealership-targeted ads on Facebook can be just as effective as Google ads, so naturally the Goliath in the marketplace wants to leverage all possible power to stay on top. As time progresses, we’re probably going to see things like:

More dynamic image ad options

More robust Google places integration with these types of ads

Video and image carousels based on user queries

Cross-shopping comparison mixed media content displayed based on what the user is looking at

As time goes on we’re hearing more and more about trigger words being important in on site SEO as well, so now’s a better time than ever to have your AdWords specialist checking your landing pages and your onsite to make sure naming conventions are happening properly across your site on things like tags, titles and images.